WAKE UP!

A frightening thought a world without wildlife, mornings without birdsong, and all that we take for granted! We must realise the dangers threatening the beauteous green world and its inhabitants around us!

- DR ASAD RAHMANI

In 1962, Dr Rachel Carson wrote a book, Silent Spring, about the horrors of agricultural pesticides/herbicides that had killed millions of birds, silently, slowly, unrecorded, bringing springs in America that were silent, hence the name of the book. Rachel was savaged by the rich and flourishing chemical industry. The DDT lobby was particularly nasty. Despite her PhD in marine biology, she was called uninformed, enemy of the USA, against development, communiststooge, and deshdhrohi. However, her science stood the test of time. Silent Spring forced people to look afresh at the lethal chemicals that we were introducing in our sky, forests, crop fields, wetlands, and soil. DDT was banned in the USA, and later in many countries. Other countries, like India, restricted DDT use. Incidentally, Silent Spring was considered the most influential book of the last century on environmental issues. Her critics have long gone – dead – but Rachel’s book survives.

When I read the book State of India’s  Birds (SoIB, 2023), it reminded me of